Your Right to Know

View SlideshowRequest to buy this photoEric Albrecht | DispatchVoters sent a stinging rebuke to Gov. John Kasich, the leading proponent of Senate Bill 5. But he isn’t up for re-election until 2014, so the long-term effects are unclear.

Gov. John Kasich awoke yesterday morning facing the following realities:

• A key component of his agenda, Senate Bill 5, had been squashed by Ohio voters who defeated Issue 2 in an off-year election that set a modern record for turnout.

• Pre-election polls showed that almost a third of his fellow Republicans would be voting against the measure.

• And, after 10 months in office, Kasich’s approval rating is in the 30s.

Kasich’s critics, naturally, drew a connection.

“Gov. Kasich has faced buyer’s remorse on steroids,” opines a memo being circulated by the Democratic Governors Association, “because of his embrace of an extreme, ideological agenda.”

Unofficially, 2,145,042 Ohioans voted against Issue 2, the referendum on the GOP-backed limits on collective bargaining for public employees passed as Senate Bill 5.

More than 3.5 million people voted in this election — a record turnout in an off-year election dating back to at least 1940, according to Secretary of State Jon Husted. (The statewide turnout percentage was the highest for an odd-numbered year in about two decades.)

For months, pundits and Democrats have said that Issue 2 was, in part, a referendum on Kasich. As the premier pitchman for the pro-Issue 2 side who campaigned across the state for its passage, Kasich did nothing to separate himself from it.

Rather, Kasich embraced Senate Bill 5 and lost big — a move perceived quietly by some Republicans as a political miscalculation.

But it’s not the first time in Kasich’s career he’s been defeated doing something that didn’t add up politically.

As a U.S. congressman from Westerville for nearly two decades, Kasich’s initial proposals to Republicans to balance the federal budget by stopping the purchase of more B-2 bombers and curbing corporate welfare drew scorn and ridicule.

How he persevered through those defeats, according to both Kasich’s confidants and more-distanced observers, could present a roadmap of persistence, and, yes, compromise, for how he might try to recover from the setback dealt by Issue 2’s defeat.

“When John puts his mind to something, he never seems to let go,” said Bruce Cuthbertson, Kasich’s congressional press secretary and communication director from 1983 through 2000, Kasich’s entire tenure in the U.S. House.

“The B-2 bomber took years, balancing the budget took years,” Cuthbertson continued. “He never let go of those issues, but he’s also very pragmatic. I think John has shown time and time again that he’ll often work with people you wouldn’t expect him to be able to work with to accomplish his goals.”

Kasich fondly retells the story of when, in the late 1980s as a non-ranking member of the U.S. House Budget Committee, he offered a budget-cutting proposal that received only 30 votes and was rejected by Republican colleagues 143-28.

But Kasich continued to push his ideas and eventually graduated to chairman of the Budget Committee. He worked with the administration of Democratic President Bill Clinton to produce a compromise package in 1997 that cleared the way to a budget surplus from 1998 to 2001.

Also in the late 1980s, Kasich took up a stance against plans by Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush to buy as many as 120 additional B-2 bombers. Kasich’s opposition caused one of his GOP colleagues in the House to call him a “traitor to our country,” Kasich wrote in his book Stand for Something: The Battle for America’s Soul.

Kasich, for years the leading Republican against the bomber purchases, teamed with liberal Democrat Rep. Ronald V. Dellums of California to form a coalition that eventually won congressional approval to cap production at 20 planes.

In 1997, Kasich and Ralph Nader worked to pare government’s participation in corporate welfare, a crusade Kasich carried for years without as much success. Observers said Kasich’s stance against corporate welfare hurt his fundraising during his short run for president in the 2000 election.

Kasich signaled on Tuesday night that he would listen to what voters told him in this election.

“You don’t ignore the public,” Kasich said. “And I also have an obligation to lead. I’ve been leading since the day I took this office, and I’ll continue to do that, but part of leading is listening.”

Cage rattling as a congressman is different than doing so as governor, as Kasich is experiencing. In Congress, it got Kasich promoted. In Columbus, it earned him a smack from voters.

Although Republicans control both chambers of Ohio’s General Assembly, some GOP lawmakers and Kasich administration officials are signaling the need to reach out to Democrats.

If Kasich does revisit some of the cost-saving provisions of Senate Bill 5 — and history suggests he will — he likely would need a buy-in from Democrats and organized labor to bring them home.

As Ohio Democratic Chairman Chris Redfern suggested on Tuesday night: “That is the lesson John Kasich must remember after tonight, and if he doesn’t, he’ll be a one-term governor.”

Kasich isn’t up for re-election until 2014. Ohio’s House and Senate members are up next year.

“John Kasich always tries to do what he thinks is right, and I don’t think that’s going to change,” said state Rep. Jay Hottinger, R-Newark. “He’s going to continue to push bold measures. ... But I think there’s a reality we all are facing, that we’re seeing more referendums. It is incumbent upon us to try to find common ground.”